Focus on gold mining in west

Fuelled by acute poverty and unemployment, hundreds of people in western Kyrgyzstan are making a living by digging gold, often endangering their lives as they seek their fortune in the fast mountain rivers. To the casual observer, the young and old people travelling along the small mountain rivers in the area might be fishermen. However, they are gold-diggers. Local people say gold can be extracted along the Kasansai River as well as other tributaries of the Syr Darya river, a major water source in Central Asia, in the Chatkal mountains in western Kyrgyzstan. Hastened by the desire to find a gold vein, they dig for hours on end. "One can keep going for one hour, two hours, three hours. There is no end of people there. People call them Altynbek ["altyn" means "gold" in the Turkic languages]," one local resident told IRIN. The gold digging started in the Chatkal range about four years ago, when a young unemployed man reportedly came across a yellow nugget. "Actually, there is gold everywhere as a gold mine was built at Terek-Sai [village] in the last century," Myrzalym, a resident of Kyzyl-Tokoi village in the vicinity of the Kasansai River, told IRIN. "One just needs to sweat to dig it out." Terek-Sai is the site of a local antimony deposit. At present it is home to a branch of the state-controlled Kyrgyzaltyn gold mining company. Myrzalym's whole family - his wife, four daughters and a son - work hard from dawn till dusk. "I dug a bore pit right in my yard. Kind of a hand-made mini-mine for a few months," he explained. "I risk my life every minute since the wooden self-made protective timbering [used to secure the mini-mine from collapsing] lulls rather than protects one in case of an accident." But now he reaps a harvest - he takes rocks out with buckets like water from a well. Bending down, his 14-year-old son manoeuvres himself down the narrow shaft. The mining work seems to have affected the little boy's body: he is skinny, but sinewy, quick and thorough, but quite unaware of the risk he faces. It was composure and self-control that rescued him last year, when rocks fell down and closed the outlet. The boy did not panic; he silently took stones and pieces of the ground away, managing to dig himself out instead. "We pan out a quarter of a gram of gold a day," said Myrzalym. "Well, in general, this is enough to survive on. When we are lucky, we pan out a half a gram and even more." The gold-diggers sell precious metal to traders from the Kyrgyzaltyn state company for little more than US $11 for one gram. Traders from neighbouring Uzbekistan pay a little bit more - almost $13. In addition, there are fewer problems dealing with them, accounting for why the precious metal is willingly sold to the latter. Myrzalym's yard is 100 metres from the bank of the Kasansai River. Hundreds of gold-diggers work below on both banks of the river. Andrei and Victor, former geologists and now gold-diggers, have been making their earnings in the area for several years. Both of them became jobless following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the mining industry in the country fell into disrepair. But the two men knew the area like the back of their hands as they have travelled the length and breadth of it. The two partners say on average each of them pans out gold worth US $100 a month, a lot of money by local standards. The average monthly salary in the impoverished Central Asian nation is just $35. "We have to live [on something], therefore we have to break our backs and endure all the gold mining miseries," they told IRIN. And there are lots of such miseries. The water is so cold the year round, it burns one to put a hand into it, they claim. Rubber footwear and gloves do not help. And a gold-digger is knee-deep in water all year round, while winters here are severe. But it is the health implications that many of the miners are largely unaware of. Rheumatism, radiculitis, catarrhal diseases and various other illnesses are common. Sometimes people stumble on slippery stones and the waves spare nobody, with some people being washed away by the currents. Kamil Atakhanov, a prominent public health expert, is calling for routine inspection of the informal mining trade. "The state bodies have to register such people and also control observance of safety measures," he told IRIN. "Otherwise, society will have thousands of sick people." But despite the dangers, gold diggers don't like to work in big groups. At best, they work in twos. "But we are always willing to share bread, tea or tobacco, or to prompt or advise a beginner," said Sadyrbai, a gold-digger from Tereksai village. "It is not true that all the sites have been bagged. You are welcome to get settled wherever you wish." However, everyone admits that only local residents are welcome. According to the local administration, 90 percent of adults in Kyzyl-Tokoi village are unemployed. Only the small "golden" river brings them hope. Half of the village lives on the yellow dust of the mountain streamlets. The situation is similar in the mountain villages of Chatkal, Aksy, and parts of Ala-Buka districts of Jalal-Abad province. And while no one really knows how much of the precious metal is actually being extracted each year, some well-informed people assert they produce tens of kilograms of high-quality pure gold every year - a figure comparable to the capacities of a small gold mining enterprise. The chief state tax inspector of Chatkal district, Naraly Batyrkanov, told IRIN that the majority of gold diggers nevertheless were in compliance with the law. They obtain permission for private entrepreneurship, he said, adding that it was the best solution to legalise their business and keep them from shifting to any underground activity. Although the golden river provides the local residents with jobs, they are far from becoming rich. "Life becomes more expensive day by day," Andrei the geologist complained. "If you go shopping to the market, you spend $30-40. Therefore, it turns out that the money is only enough for buying food and paying for bills." His colleague Myrzalym saves each cent in an effort to raise money to provide dowries for his daughters. All of them would be glad to get a job at the local gold mining enterprise. The salary is lower there, at about $70, but they provide some social benefits - free medical treatment, tickets to sanatoriums, a children's allowance and disability payments. Private gold diggers receive nothing. Ashim Kimsanov, director of Kyrgyzaltyn's Tereksai mine branch, told IRIN about plans to expand gold production in the area. There is talk about construction of a new gold mining factory. Deposits of gold-bearing ore are enough for at least 50 years. Meanwhile, geologists guarantee the opening up of new deposits. But hundreds of people continue to seek their fortune on the banks of the rivers of Chatkal. Shavkat Tajibaev, a trade union representative, suggests gold diggers should unite in a union in an effort to protect their interests. It is a lack of unity that obstructs creating basic working conditions and social protection for these people, he added. "Serious organisational work among them is needed," the union activist stressed, noting however that nobody was currently engaged in this work. "The local authorities are not going to pose any obstacles to individual gold diggers. But at the same time, they do not provide any organisational or social support either. The state bodies are happy that people have jobs. As a matter of fact, they generate employment themselves; therefore social tensions are going down," Tajibaev explained. "We adhere to the policy of private entrepreneurship development, and we will encourage any initiative in this respect," Emil Abdykadyrov, a senior official responsible for industry issues at the Jalal-Abad provincial governorship, noted. And while the authorities recognise that there are a number of unresolved issues among private gold diggers, including finding markets for the mined gold and a lack of social security, officials believe the best solution could be the creation of an association or a union of gold diggers.